


The New Beekeeper's Progress

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Love Revealed, Memory, Minor Character Death, Sad-ish ending.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-27 00:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1708697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ok. I finally return from all sex narratives, and land us with Sherlock, less interaction with John and Mary than I had planned, because they ended up taking their own detour, and Sherlock and Janine issues. Minor character death. Or depending on just how you look at it, major character death, but only by deciding for yourself who's major in this story. Sussex cottage. Sherlock pining a bit.  A peaceful ending, but probably a few of you will want to snivel and grab hankies. </p><p>There is something about Janine that brings out my yen for Sherlock to grow up a bit, and grow wiser. I think it's that whole Sussex cottage thing, and something about a woman who's just plain able to kick his ass, call him on his BS, beat him at his own game--and still care about him. It's like Janine's just there waiting for him to blossom into the Sussex Beekeeper he's supposed to end up, as delighted with his book on the "Segregation of the Queen" as ever he was over catching  crook. </p><p>The ghost elements? Make of them what you will. But part of me so wants her to be there, a reverse "Ghost and Mrs. Muir" ghost, waiting for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Beekeeper's Progress

[Lucy Muir](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000074/?ref_=tt_trv_qu): It's no crime to be alive!

[Captain Gregg](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001322/?ref_=tt_trv_qu): No, my dear, sometimes it's a great inconvenience. The living can be hurt.

Quote from _The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, 1947,_ Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

 

He had been studying the plantings in a flower bed when he got the news—a decorative bed of snapdragons, iris, and tall lupines against a tall grey stone wall on an estate just outside London—not an important investigation. Really, just follow-up on a closed case, but Sherlock had wanted to confirm a few points. He had become fascinated at the honey bees humming restlessly over the planting. One slim, gold and black worker had slipped into a snapdragon blossom like a lion-tamer putting his head into a lion’s mouth, then pulled back out dusted with gold pollen. It was fascinating—beautiful. Sleek. Its panniers were filled with pollen, its head was crowned with golden dust. Its antennae waggled as though it were receiving messages from beyond.

“What?” Sherlock said, suddenly jerked from the comfortable semi-trance he often fell into when John was just mumbling on about nothing important. “What did you say?”

John frowned at him, that furrow-browed, mildly exasperated look that _he_ often fell into when Sherlock was an oblivious prat who couldn’t be arsed to pay attention to a thing John was saying. “I said, Mary’s getting together with some of her old friends from before to attend Janine’s wake tomorrow night, so I’m on baby-detail.”

Sherlock scowled. “What wake? For who?”

“For _Janine_ ,” John said, not all that patiently. “You know—Janine? Mary’s maid of honor? Girl you were cock enough to fake a relationship with?”

Sherlock continued to frown. “Wake?”

Realization began to dawn, slowly, and John said, “You…didn’t know. Did you?”

“She’s dead?”

Something flickered in John’s eyes—something between exasperation, sorrow, and sympathy. “Yeah. Um—I thought you’d have heard. Yeah. About a month ago. This is the first her old gang could manage to get together and raise one in her memory.”

Sherlock swallowed, surprised by his own startled surprise. “I…no. I hadn’t heard. Is someone working on the case?”

“There’s no case,” John said, quietly. “Sherlock, it was an accident. Driver had a stroke while Janine was crossing the high. Ten injured, five killed. She was one of them.”

“Have they checked that the driver wasn’t poisoned, or drugged, or on a suicide mission?”

“Sherlock, it was an accident. Stupid, pointless, tragic accident. One of the people who died was just a kid. Another was a pregnant mother. Not everything’s a mystery, at least not the way you’re thinking.”

“I could go down and check the files.”

“Sherlock, there’s nothing to check.”

“You don’t know that, John,” Sherlock said, imperiously. “I’ll check it out myself,” he added, then prowled away, frowning, disappearing without another word, sloping across the green lawns, already calling a cab.

When he got home he leaned shakily against the mantel, trying to sort out what was wrong—and something was wrong. He was upset. Upset because someone had died. Not someone particularly important, he assured himself. One of hundreds of people he knew…

He pulled out his phone, started to text, then for no reason he understood changed his mind and placed a voice call. When the connection was made he said, “Mycroft?”

“What’s wrong?” Mycroft’s voice was instantly tense.

“I…nothing,” Sherlock said. “I was…I wondered…” he shook his head, trying to clear it. “I wanted to ask a favor.”

The silence on the other end of the link seemed endless, then Mycroft said with even more tension, “Sherlock, tell me now—what’s _wrong?”_

“Nothing! I just… an associate died. I just heard. I believe in suspicious circumstances. Before I go down to check myself, I wondered…I’m going to ask Lestrade, too, but…You’ve got more clout. Can you see what’s in the records? Lestrade can get the basics, but I need to know if she was in any kind of trouble.”

“She?” Mycroft sounded more than a little gobsmacked.

“Yes, _she_ , brother-mine. I do happen to know at least a few females—which is more than I can say with any conviction for you. Unless you count those thrust upon you by mere professional proximity.”

Mycroft scoffed, softly, then said, “Very well. I can check. Does the deceased have a name? A location?”

“I thought you could solve anything from a blank start, Mike.”

“I can,” Mycroft snapped. “I will concede it’s quicker if you give me a bit of a clue, though. What is it the Americans say? ‘The difficult I do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer.’”

“Janine Noorani. Irish-Pakistani, Dublin raised, English citizenship. Resident in a cottage on the South Downs in Sussex, just outside of Seaford, with a view of the Seven Sisters.”

Mycroft paused, then said, with interest. “Oh! Magnussen’s PA. That should make things easier; I’m sure we were keeping tabs on her. Turned journalist, didn’t she?”

Sherlock swallowed. “No. No, she sold some tripe about us to the scandal rags, but once she had a nest egg she turned to writing romances. I’m…told she was quite good.”

“Don’t tell me you _cared_ about her, Sherlock?” Mycroft said, stunned.

“Of course not. She was clever. I appreciate cleverness. But it was all a ruse, on my part.” Sherlock tried to massage away a threatening headache that seemed to be brewing like a storm somewhere between his brows. “Look, she was killed in a freak accident near her own town. Supposed to be a driver with a stroke who lost control in the market area of the High Street. Considering her connection with Magnussen, it seems suspicious. And Magnussen had something on her. I don’t know what. That might have caught up with her, too. Can you look into it?”

“Of course,” Mycroft said, almost humming. “I’d have done anyway, little brother, but this actually shows some promise of proving of interest. And you?”

“Contacting Lestrade,” Sherlock said. “Later, if necessary, I’ll be going down to Sussex to check for myself.”

Lestrade was able to pull in the records quickly, and with little trouble, for the depressingly obvious reason that they contained nothing of interest. Anne Dumbrell, fifty-seven, suffered a stroke while driving into Seaford, losing control of her vehicle and striking eighteen people, of whom ten were injured and of whom five died. No indicates of wrongdoing on anyone’s part. Dumbrell was listed as a “death by natural causes,” and the others as “accidental deaths.”

“This is ridiculous,” Sherlock snarled at Lestrade, slapping the file down on the DI’s desk. “You’ve got training in two—“

“Shut it, Sherlock,” Lestrade cracked out, then lowered his voice. “What is wrong with you? You know better than to get careless.”

“I’m not the one handing out idiotic, poorly conducted case histories.”

Lestrade ran one hand over his head, frowning in deep concentration. “Sherlock, you’ve got to calm down.”

“I. Do. Not. Have. To. Calm. Down.”* Sherlock snarled out each word so hard spittle threatened to fizz from his clenched teeth. He leaned his fists on the DI’s desk, and leaned in. “Look into it, Lestrade.”

Lestrade sighed, and said, quietly, “A’right, Sherlock. I’ll look. I _am_ looking. But—call John. Or go out with me, later, yeah? Have a pint? You’re _not_ all right.”

“ _I am perfectly fine,”_ Sherlock roared, and raged away with his Belstaff spinning behind him like a little lost dust devil as he stormed out of the Met offices.

“When is the wake,” he asked John later, by phone. “And where?”

“Why?” John asked, and Sherlock could almost hear his brow furrowing again.

“I can hardly attend if I don’t know where and when, now can I? Do try to follow along, John, I don’t have time to be forever bringing you up to date on the obvious.”

“You’re attending?”

“Yes.”

“Janine’s wake?”

“What part of ‘yes’ escaped your astute observations?”

There was a long silence, then John said, in his “humoring Sherlock” voice, “Ah, yeah. Um, tell you what, mate, can you give me a mo’?” Before Sherlock could deny him the time, he’d clearly walked away, leaving the phone lying out. Soon Sherlock could hear the faint sound of muffled voices—Mary and John—overlaid by the happy babble of baby Em. Soon after he couldn’t even hear the sound of muffled voices, as baby Em found her Daddy’s mobile and proceeded to test it for its culinary value.

Sherlock smiled, wanly, for the first time in hours. “Em, love, put the nice mobile down,” he said, amused. “Seriously, it’s much more fun to play with than to eat. Trust me on this. One of these days you won’t go two steps without one of these. I’ll make sure your father gets you a good one, too. All the bells and whistles.”

“Aaraaaaaa-ya!”

Which was amusing, he thought, but not precisely conversation.

Then she managed to hang up on him…apparently a well-placed baby tooth just coming through had pressed the right spot at the right time.

Sherlock sighed, and leaned back in the arm chair, staring at the old, overstuffed chair he still thought of as “John’s.” Today, though, that ghost that haunted the empty space wasn’t John’s. Sherlock closed his eyes.

_“Ah, y’re soft on ‘er, Shay. Always said you were marshmallow inside, no matter how tough you tried to be outside.”_

His eyes snapped open. The chair was still empty.

He’d moved the chair as much because he couldn’t bear to see her sitting in John’s chair as because he couldn’t bear to see John’s chair empty. But, then, even when he’d brought it back down in hopes of John’s return to case work, it had seemed a reproach.

“I wasn’t in love with you,” he told the echoing silence and the empty chair. “It was just tactics. I needed to get at Magnussen. You were convenient.”

_“No, Shay-Shay. The case was convenient. It let you dance…with me.”_

“I didn’t love you.”  He could almost see her smile, and the cocky angle of her head as she leaned back in John’s chair, legs crossed, hands folded easily over her stomach, eyes fond. “I didn’t love you,” he said again.

 _“Ah, Sherl,”_ she said, softly, _“How would you know? However would you know?”_

John called back a half-hour later. “Seven, at the Anchor, but don’t worry about getting there. Mary will be by to pick you up on her way.”

“I can call a cab,” Sherlock said.

“It’s on her way, give or take a bit. Don’t argue, you prat. She’ll be there about half-six.”

He told himself it was costuming, as he dug through his closet for black trousers, black jacket, black silk shirt. When he was done he stood in front of the mirror, straight and tall, head high, then tucked a white pocket square, like a flag of surrender, in the breast pocket.

Later that night, John said to Mary, “It was an act. He’s convinced there was something rubbish about her death, and he’s treating it like a case. He can cry at the drop of a hat.” He sighed, and came up behind her, putting his arms around her. “Look. I know it’s upsetting, but…I’m sorry. It wasn’t real. He doesn’t feel quite the way the rest of us feel. I’ve seen him, love. Crocodile tears streaming down his face for a man he never even met, all to trick the widow into giving him a few clues.”

“He didn’t need to trick anyone, John. Hell, all he had to do was come in like Death on holiday, all in black with that damned handkerchief… and that face. The girls were falling all over themselves, and that’s in spite of the fact they _knew_ what he did to her. He didn’t have to cry, John.”

“He’s a drama queen, Mary. You know he is.”

“Not like that,” she said, shaken. “Not…like that. He’s mourning her, John. In his crazy, Sherlock way, he’s mourning her.”

John gave a wry little laugh. “All right. I can accept ‘in his crazy, Sherlock way.’ But—he didn’t love her, Mary. You don’t do things like that to people you love.”

She turned in his arms, then, and looked at him, eyes amused, ironic, and utterly disbelieving. It took a few moments for the silent dialog between them—the reminder of the fall, of the fights when Sherlock had returned, the many, many mad betrayals of normal friendship John had suffered. At last he said, resigned, “All right. Maybe. Maybe he did. But what difference does it make, Mary? She’s dead, now.”

“I don’t know,” she replied, quietly. “But—maybe it’s just me. But I think love always makes a difference, even if we don’t know what. Even to Sherlock Holmes.” She smiled, a sweet, pensive smile, and added in her laughing, thoughtful voice, “Maybe especially to Sherlock Holmes.”

He didn’t realize how much he welcomed Mycroft’ voice when his brother called again. He was good at ignoring things like that—the pleasure of a familiar voice, the comfort of knowing he had someone at his side, guarding his back, the sweetness of a smile, the value of a kiss. Still, when he heard his brother say his name, he smiled, all unaware.

“What, brother-mine? I do hope you’ve got something interesting for me.”

“Quite,” Mycroft said, smugness seeping out even over a phone connection. “Your Janine—interesting one. Turns out she’s one of ours.”

Sherlock blinked. “An agent?”

“No, no, no. Thought it’s a shame. The more I read the more I think we may have missed a good bet, there. But, no—informant. At least, she had been. In the nineties.”

“She’d have hardly been old enough, then, Mycroft.”

“Don’t be naive, brother mine. I’d been working two years by that age. We took our informants where we could, back then. We take them where we can now. Her family moved from Dublin to Liverpool when she was in her teens. Lost a brother to the Manchester bombing. Walked straight in off the streets the day after and apparently wouldn’t leave until she’d been accepted. Served as a good eye on the streets for five years, then we moved her into industrial espionage. We only pulled her when she was involved in a sting inside the film industry. After that we didn’t use her—we were afraid someone would put two and two together and make a connection. She’d been a civilian for years when she started work for Magnussen.”

“Did he know?”

“I can’t prove it, but…yes. I would assume he did.”

“And knew who was left who’d be interested?”

“Of course. You know his MO. Most likely he didn’t threaten her, though—he threatened her family back in Liverpool.”

He knew Magnussen’s MO. “He tortured her, you know,” he said to his brother. “Like he tortured John. The eyes. He went for the eyes. He said she actually managed not to blink, once.”

“You care,” Mycroft said…wavering between empathy and dismay.

“He tortured her,” Sherlock said. “Do you know what I did when I heard?”

“No,” Mycroft said.

“I shot him,” Sherlock replied.

“I thought…I thought that was for John.”

“Him, too,” Sherlock said, then, pretending casual ease even more badly than usual, “Well, then, thank you for that, brother-mine. You’ll call if you hear of any of her old employers or contacts showing any interest in her over the past year or so?”

“Of course, Sherlock,” Mycroft said, tartly. “You’re the one who leaves people hanging with only half the information they need. Some of us have a commitment to due diligence.”

He went walking in Regents Park that afternoon. The sun was soft. He followed the track around the boating lake, where he and Janine had walked together when he’d been courting her.

“Pretending to court her,” he corrected himself. A passing mother with a pushchair gave him an odd look, then hurried on.

At last he came to a stop on the paving overlooking the boat and pedalo hire. The blue pedalos were popular, as ever, pairs and singletons both renting the ungainly, ugly things and pedaling around the lake, laughing in the sun.

_“Once would have been nice, Shay-Shay. Not everything’s serious.”_

_“I was going to,”_ he answered, silently.

_“When we were married. That wasn’t happening, was it, Sherlock…”_

_“I liked you.”_

_“Funny way of showin’ it, ye cute hoor.”_

_“I did, though.”_

_“I know, Sherl. I know. Still—once would have been nice. Once around the lake, in the sun, laughing. I asked often enough. The pedalo and the zoo…”_

_“You’re right. Once—once would have been nice.”_

He could admit it in silence. He could admit it to the dead. Once would have been nice for so many things.

He stared down at the concrete pavement. There was a puddle, there, dark on the pebbly surface. It was deep for a puddle on pavement, just deep enough to rise up around the inset stones and gravel and ripple in the wind. He bent over and poked at it, automatically tallying the leaf fragments (by species), the catkins blown off the oaks of the park, a red scrap of petal from one of the flower beds, a golden scrap—no. A bee. He squatted, and considered.

A worker bee had apparently flown down to drink the water, and either misgauged the depth or touched a wing down and been trapped by surface tension. It struggled, frantically.

He eased a finger under it, putting his fingernail under the thrusting, pulsing abdomen, hoping to avoid the sting.

“Fly,” he said, sternly, holding it high. “Fly off. Live. Avoid the seaside. It’s bad for bees and elves. And friends.”

Instead, though, it crept a fraction of an inch, stabbed hard—and died, pulsing bee venom into his finger. He swore, and shook it off, flicking away the stinger. He sucked his finger, frowning.

“That hurt,” he said. “Damn. That hurt.”

 _“Tell me about it, Shay-Shay,”_ she said—and then she was gone.

 _“I wasn’t supposed to miss you,”_ he thought. “ _You weren’t supposed to die. Not yet. Not ever.”_

Of course, she wasn’t there to answer. She hadn’t been for a long time.

“Turns out there was some question about Anne Dumbrell’s condition after all,” Lestrade said, sounding a bit stunned. “The medical examiner insisted there wasn’t—that it was straight forward. But her own doctor had done a thorough workup on her just weeks before—she’d been having headaches. They did the whole work-up, including basic blood flow. He insisted there was no sign she was at risk for a stroke—at least, very low probability.”

“A stroke is easy enough to simulate,” Sherlock said. “Any other news?”

“Not so far. I’ll let you know.”

Sherlock didn’t bother thanking him—just hung up and dialed Mycroft, filling him in on the information. “it’s a clean way to make a kill,” he added. “No one asks why the woman died—they’re to busy trying to justify how she came to take five other people with her.”

“I’d suggest it was a long-shot, but I’ve just got in news of my own,” Mycroft said. “It appears Magnussen contacted George Hammersmith the day after your break-in and shooting. The day after Janine was fired.”

“George Hammersmith? The one in film production?”

“The same. Janine had worked for him. It was information from her that led to his son’s arrest for human trafficking. Young Geordie was telling girls in Poland that he could get them in the movies. He could prove it. He had the paperwork. Unfortunately, the girls tended to take a little detour along the way.”

“Janine?”

“Pretended to represent a brothel in Manchester.”

“Ah.”

“Hammersmith’s got an interest in a number of production companies. One started work on a documentary in East Dean the week before Janine’s death.”

“Ah.”

“One of the crew was in Seaford at the time of the accident. He’s the one who said he saw Mrs. Dumbrell collapse over the steering wheel.”

“Do we have an address for him?”

“Unfortunately not, unless one can track the motion of particles of ash in the Irish Sea. He died a week later. Alcohol poisoning on a pub crawl. Cremated.”

“You know what you always say about ‘coincidence,’ brother?”

“Why, yes, Sherlock, oddly enough, I do.”

Sherlock could hear fangs in Mycroft’s voice—fangs not intended for him. It was odd how comforting he could find the sound of Mycroft in his wrath.

“You’ll stay with this, then?”

“We take care of our own, brother-dear. You can rest assured of it.”

“She hadn’t worked for you in years.”

“Your point?”

“No point,” Sherlock said, then, softly. “Just—keep after it. And let me know if there’s a way we can take Hammersmith down.”

“Now, now, Sherlock. One assassinated mogul is enough for a lifetime, don’t you think?”

“I could make an exception.”

“I’ve been checking for other likely suspects. I think you need to check on the matter of her will, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. “What?  You’re mucking about, Mike. I can hear it. You’re up to something.”

“Nothing in the least,” Mycroft said, voice dripping innocence like the bee had dripped water. “Nothing at all. Just due diligence. A suspicious death—you check the heirs.”

He tracked the executor of the estate down to a small solicitor’s office in Seaford. He called down, and was quickly answered.

“Yes. Beth Reilly. Yes. I’m the executor of Miss Noorani’s estate. Hmm. Serendipity. I was getting ready to contact you. We’ve cleared probate, and you’re one of the recipients of a bequest…so by all means, come down. We can talk.”

She was a sensible woman with steel-grey hair, steel-framed glasses, and a suit of steel-grey wool nicely enough tailored to have impressed even Mycroft a little.

“No, really, nothing unusual for the most part,” she said to Sherlock, seeming uncowed by the long, lanky man lurking by the window of her office, a brooding presence whose Byronic riffs seemed to amuse her more than anything. “She wrote it over two years ago, when she moved down, and didn’t change it even once after. Simple, straightforward woman who knew was she wanted. I looked forward to being her solicitor, to tell the truth. She promised to be one of the ones you like, rather than one of the ones you think of only in terms of your hourly billing. The bulk of her estate was left to her mother and her surviving brother. Some minor bequests, most of them quite private, but none likely to stir your interests. This is merely a hypothetical instance to give you an idea of the sort of gifts, but most of what she bequeathed was small and obvious.”

“Such as?”

“Such as none of your business. But—I’ve seen similar bequests. Prayerbooks to former priests, a piece of jewelry to a friend who liked it. It was all rather ordinary, though Miss Noorani was herself quite extraordinary. Really, there was only one outstanding bequest.” She smiled at him, sly and amused.

He paused, and drew a breath, holding her in a pale, opal stare. “Do stop playing, Ms. Reilly.”

She grinned, and drew out a slim white envelope. “Here. See for yourself.”

He stepped across the room, slid the envelope across the desk, until he held it, and retreated back to the window, opening it with a neat penknife and scanning the first page. Almost instantly, before he could have finished more than the first flew lines, he flipped to the next page, and simply…stopped.

The room was quiet. The sunlight fell in wide ribbons, dust motes sparkling in the sunshine as they fell. Beth Reilly watched the man, and concluded with some personal satisfaction that her client’s gift had not left him unmoved. She was glad. Too often she saw great gifts given to those who treated them as tawdry and inadequate entitlements, unworthy of their own great importance. After a time, she said, smiling to herself, “There’s a third page, you know.”

He glanced up, surly and annoyed. “Obvious.”

“A private letter to you, I believe.”

“Also obvious. Do we have more business?”

She grinned. “None. Happy to see it…mattered.”

He glowered at her. “Sentiment.”

“I’m in the business of sentiment, Mr. Holmes. I’ll tell you a secret—at the end of your life, you have only two things left. What you’ve given to people you care about, and what you’ve received. Both, when you think about it, are pretty much pure sentiment. Don’t underrate it, young man.”

“Don’t lecture, old woman,” he snapped back. “If we’re done, I’m leaving.”

“Not without the key,” she said, and opened a desk drawer. She slipped out a small manila envelope, and held it out.

He looked at it with an intensity that verged on fear.

“It’s yours,” she said.

He nodded, crossed the room, took it and put it in his pocket, and gave her one last, sullen frown—then was gone.

She sighed. “Ah, Janey, I see what you saw in him. But what a sorry prat. I doubt he’ll know he loves a single thing in this life before he’s afraid he’s lost it—and God, will the poor bastard suffer when he does.”

The downs were open and green, and the wind off the sea blew on and on over them, tossing the heather and gorse, stirring the grasses. Sherlock walked, eyes on the horizon, huddled in his coat, collar up high. Once, at a crossroad, he asked directions at a small house. Once he used his phone to pull up a GPS map. Mainly he walked, silent, listening to the wind and the chrrrrrrr of crickets, the argumentative cry of songbirds. Once he stopped and watched a windhover stand poised and still, balanced on the wind so perfectly it could not be moved. Then its wings folded, and it dropped, only to rise again with a lizard hanging from its talons.

The envelope was tucked in the breast pocket of the coat. The key was clutched in his hand, deep in the pocket of his trousers.

At last he came to the cottage. It was small, surrounded by farmland. There was a small barn at the back, with a paddock.

He opened the gate and went in.

She’d planted peonies, he saw. They were just coming into bloom, fat and lush, bobbing in the wind that kept him huddled in the coat. They were red and pink and white, and they smelled like heaven. A few bees crept along the petals.

Bees, he thought. There had been hives. She was going to get rid of them.

He walked around back, and there they were.

There they had been.

She hadn’t had the heart to get rid of them, he saw. Someone, though, in a fit of spite, had toppled them. A stone and a long length of pipe, fulcrum and lever, told him how it had been managed. Then someone had thrown gasoline over the hives and set them alight.

A dead bee tumbled across the walk, and rolled past the tip of his shoe.

He turned to look at the cottage. Across the white paint, someone had painted a fist with a single raised finger, and JN—R.I.P.

He slipped the phone out of his pocket and dialed.

“Mycroft.”

“What’s wrong?”

“They killed her,” he said.

He never did stop to be grateful that his brother failed to point out that they had already suspected as much. Instead Mycroft said only, “I’ll take care of it.”

“No. I want to.”

“No,” Mycroft said, voice suddenly fierce. “I won’t let you sacrifice yourself. Not for vengeance. Damn you, Sherlock, if you’ve got to self-destruct, do it to invest in the future, not to rub out the damages of the past.”

Sherlock didn’t answer, he just hung up.

The envelope stayed, warm and safe, tucked in his pocket.

On the way out of town, he stopped once more at the Beth Reilly’s offices, coming in with a slam and swaying in her rooms, hair wild from the wind, and eyes wild from everything else.

“You can arrange for an estate manager?”

She cocked her head and studied him. “Are you retaining my services?”

“On a limited basis, yes.”

“Then yes. I can arrange for an estate manager. You have the funds to pay for services and maintenance?”

“Yes.”

“Then what do you want?”

“The cottage repainted. The outbuildings checked and repaired if necessary. And bring back the bees.”

John got the first call. Mary, busy with baby Em, didn’t miss his sudden change in manner. Her husband often passed as what a fool might call a mild-mannered chap. Mary knew differently—and she knew the difference between John’s latent, constant deadliness, and the body language of the warrior roused, even from inside the house with John in the back garden.

He scowled and spoke into the phone, seeming to spout fast bursts of speech, ask flashing questions. He glanced up at the house, saw her within, and nodded, eyes wary. She waved out, chipper, knowing the saw her own sudden shift to lethal alertness.

Baby Em cranked at her Mum. She was too young to appreciate the fact that she was the child of fighters.

John hoped she would never know. Mary hoped she’d never need to know—but would know regardless.

Mary rocked her baby, and hummed, softly. “Daddy’s on alert, sweetie. I think he’s been tagged by a Holmes. I wonder which one?”

She put the baby to bed in her cot, and went to the kitchen to make tea. John joined her a half-hour later.

“Mycroft called.”

“How nice,” she said with a wicked smile. “Just keeping in touch?”

“You know better,” John replied. He scowled and stared out the window into the garden. “He wants us…by which I think he really means you…to do some, er, ‘work’ for him.”

She cocked her head, then said, “Which you’re actually inclined to encourage me to take.”

“Only if you bring me along.”

“Sherlock would disown me if I didn’t,” she said. “I’m his locum when he can’t lead you into trouble, after all. What is it?”

“Assassination,” John said.

She whistled, and grinned a bit. “Well. It must be someone you think deserves it.”

"They killed Janine.”

“And Mcyroft is involved?”

“Apparently, yes.”

“Do we know why?”

John looked away from her, pacing restlessly around the room. “He thinks it’s necessary.”

“That much is obvious. Why?”

John sighed. “The truth? I don’t think I really know. I do know this—he’s afraid if we don’t, Sherlock will.”

Mary pursed her lips. “Sherlock.”

“Apparently.”

“Why?”

“Um…revenge.”

“Sherlock.” She leaned back, nursing her mug of tea, studying her husband. At last she said, softly, “He did love her, then.”

“Mycroft thinks he…became involved. I don’t think even Mycroft is sure if he was involved before she died, or after.”

She smiled. She had a wise, too-knowing smile—the kind but ironic smile of some ancient goddess who’s seen it all… “Before,” she said, softly. “I doubt he knew. But…yeah. Before.”

“How can he not know, Mary,” John asked, exasperated. “That makes no sense.”

She met his eyes and said, for what seemed like the millionth time, “St. Bart’s. The fall. Come on, John. Anything else in all the world, he’s ten jumps ahead of us all. His own feelings? Ten jumps behind.”

He rolled his eyes, but sighed in agreement. “Yes, all right. Fine. You’re right. Sherlock. Anyway, Mycroft’s got some other dog in this fight. I don’t know what, but he’s taking it personally. But that doesn’t matter. To me what matters is I think he’s really afraid to let Sherlock deal with this.”

She nodded. “No.” She straightened. “All right. Give me the phone.”

He handed it to her, and she dialed. As soon as the phone picked up, she said, “You’re arranging the babysitter, Mycroft. You cover the costs, I’ll waive the fee. I expect your full backup. But, yeah. I’ll take this one.” She glanced at John and smiled a sharp, evil smile. “ _We’ll_ take this one. No, Mycroft. Not for you. For Janine. And for Sherlock. And for them it’s on the house. What? No, you’re not coming…oh. Um, yes. All right. Tonight, then. Planning meeting, and then we go. See you then.”

John stormed around the kitchen, then looked at her incredulously. “Mary, don’t tell me he’s coming along.”

She grinned. “Not exactly. He’s coming over for a mission review. He’s apparently worked it out pretty well for us, up to and including our support team. But after that?” She giggled, and said, “Babysitter.”

John gave a bark of laughter. “Oh my God. You’re kidding.”

She shook her head, eyes sparkling. “No. The British Government deigns to babysit. She’s going to be guarded by Mycroft Holmes. And his Walther P99. Apparently he intends there to be no falling off in the quality of her protection during our absence.”

“Well,” John said, grinning. “Well. Good old Uncle Mycroft. Who’d have guessed? I guess we’re going to out hunting, then, aren’t we?”

The trip up from Sussex took no more than a couple hours. Sherlock reached Baker Street at six in the evening, and was calling for a curry before he’d even opened the downstairs door. He shouted a greeting to Mrs. Hudson, then thundered up the stairs, feet pounding, and burst into the sitting room, grabbing the laptop and beginning the search. If Mycroft wouldn’t help him locate Hammersmith, he’d have to do it himself. He wasn’t quite as efficient as Mycroft’s people—but, then, he didn’t think he’d have to be. Not if he could break in and hack their work instead.

Two hours later he wasn’t so confident. Five times he’d almost managed to break into MI6’s most classified files. Five times, just as everything seemed about to fall into place, the last password determined, the last trap dodged, the system would close down, security would slam into place, and Sherlock was left swearing.

_“Let it go, Sherl. It’s not worth it.”_

_“You’re not worth it?”_

_“Not the way you’re doing it, you silly gobshite.”_

_“He killed you.”_

_“Wouldn’t know. Kind of busy dyin’ at the time. Really, Shezz, darlin’, it’s not worth it. Revenge? The secret? It’s only worth it if it’s fun. It’s only worth it if it buys your future. Otherwise? Screw it. Live, you daft bugger.”_

He closed his eyes and remembered the laughing gleam of victory in her eyes as she’d dropped the piles of newspapers on his aching abdomen in the hospital. The glee as he’d read the headlines and seen how completely she’d foxed him—and for a profit at that. The pride and integrity in every move as she skinned his ego alive, laid out the core sin of deceiving her in pride, when he could have been honest in love and done as well—and still had her.

“ _I didn’t love you.”_

_“Yeah, you did, Shez. You were just a bit late to admit it.”_

He could remember her, here. In Baker Street. In his home. In his arms. In his bed.

“ _I should have come down to see you.”_

_“Yeah, you should have. You were a deadly bastard, you were. You should have come down to see me, love.”_

He sighed and nodded. “ _Just once…just once would have been nice.”_

She didn’t answer. The dead are like that. They only speak when they choose to be heard—and when they do, you can’t silence a word.

Sherlock’s phone rang. He answered, wearily. “What is it, Mycroft. Planning to gloat?”

“Only a little, brother-mine. Planning on giving up?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Five attempts, all quite nice. But, really, did you think I wouldn’t be keeping watch?”

Sherlock swore. “Mike…”

“Oh, give over. I told you, you’ve bagged your limit. And this one’s not yours anyway. I have other talent taking care of the actual killers. But Hammersmith? He’s doesn’t deserve to die.”

Sherlock sat bolt up, growling. “You’ve put out a hit on his talent, but you’re letting him live? Mycroft—“

“Oh, shut it, Sherlock. I’m not letting him ‘live.’ I’m letting him face our wrath.”

Sherlock paused, and thought, then said, cautiously. “What do you have in mind, Mycroft?”

“You. Me. Dueling laptops. Just like the good old days. Think you can still fake an embezzlement trail?”

Sherlock began to grin. “Just watch me.”

When Mary and John came home they found Anthea walking the floor with the baby, and Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes in residence in their sitting room, the two occupying opposite sides of the dinner table, crumpled paper, tablets, tea cups, and Jaffa cake wrappers scattered around them, laughing their heads off.

“What the f—“

“Shhh,” Anthea growled.

“Oh for God’s sake,” John snapped, “the baby’s wide awake. What do you mean, ‘Shhhh’? What are those two doing?”

“Toying with their prey,” Anthea said, giggling. “Don’t ruin it for them. They’ve established a paper trail proving Hammersmith sold government secrets to the Russians, seduced the late mother of a Pashtun warlord, embezzled funds from no less than five New Jersey casinos, paid to distribute comic translations of the Koran In limerick form, conspired to kill the Queen’s corgis, and hated Princess Diana. Oh, and was the controlling power behind George Lucas’ second trilogy. Mycroft’s even proven that Jar-Jar Binks was Hammersmith’s own idea. The news is hitting the headlines tomorrow, with the backup proofs direct from Wikileaks.”

“You’re not serious,” John said, peeved. “We just spent hours taking down three flunkies, and Mycroft and Sherlock are going to let the bastard who arranged to kill six people, including Janine, go free?”

Mary, however, was whooping. “No, no, sweetheart,” she said, “they’ve decided to kill the bastard in public. Legally.” She met Anthea’s eye. “How solid are the proofs of treason? The sale of secrets to the Russians?”

“Mr. Holmes maintains a lengthy catalogue of substantive acts of treason we can prove at a moment’s notice,” Anthea said.

“Whose treason?” John asked.

“Whose do you want?” Anthea dangled her Blackberry in front of baby Em and watched her study the Angry Birds.

John’s eyes flickered, and he looked at the two brothers, sniggering and passing each other notes. “I…see.”

“Yeah,” Mary said, and took her daughter from Anthea. “They’ll make sure the sonofabitch doesn’t have a good day from now till the day he dies. And the whole time the press will be watching, and the internet will be theorizing and the social media are going to be an acid bath. The ones we hit tonight are the lucky ones, John. Hammersmith is going envy them.”

John smiled. “Well. Good. That’s nice, then.” He studied the two women, and grinned in contentment. “So long as justice is served, right? How about a cuppa and some toast and beans, then? I’m starved.”

Sherlock had been sleeping in the cottage in Sussex for five days, before he finally made himself take out the thin white envelope again. He sat at what had once been Janine’s table, and laid out three pieces of paper.

The first was a lawyer’s letter, stating that Janine Helene Youtab Noorani had bequeathed him a cottage in Sussex, with all appurtenant lands and structures, to be held wholly in his name without contest or provision from the time of her will clearing probate onward, to do with as he wished.

The second was the deed to the property.

The third was a letter, in Janine’s bold, slashing hand.

Sherlock touched the paper. The verticals of her letters, the bold horizontal cross-bars, the dots that seemed almost like accent marks, the pothooks that dove down only to leap back up with an arc like a breaching porpoise.

He’d almost forgotten her handwriting.

_Hey, Shay-Shay. If you’re reading this, I guess I’ve died. Odd, that, when I think how many times I’ve said I was perishing for a good shag or dying for a pint or the like. But, hey. We all get one death assigned to us, and the good news is that only cute hoors like you are idjit enough to work out ways to die more than the set limit. You’d think one was enough…_

_Anyway. I’m dead. The cottage is yours. The way I see it, you paid for it, in the end. Not that you didn’t owe me, but you might as well get some joy of it now I don’t need it anymore. It’s a sweet place, and someday you’re going to want it. You’re not who you think you are, Shez. You’re not who you try to be. You’re not Mike’s bad boy junkie brother, and for all you’re wicked brill, you’re not going to want to be the World’s Only Consulting yadda-yadda forever. Someday you’re going to need a place to figure out who you do want to be. Now you’ve got one._

_Shay, if you haven’t seen it before with me, it means you never did come down to visit. Now that’s your loss, you damned tosser. But you should have done it. You should have dared._

_I’d have loved you, regardless. No. I do love you, regardless. Maybe not the way I thought I did. I’ll never know now, I guess. But I love you, you daftie. Always have. You had me since you admitted that maybe a man with a history of erectile dysfunction might not be my best bet, at Mary and John’s wedding. By the time you pirouetted, I was gone._

_And, yeah. Maybe it couldn’t have been what you pretended. But it could have been something. We could have been friends._

_So, yeah, anyway, I’m just going on like I’m completely mental, which you’d say I was. But keep the cottage, love. Keep it, enjoy it, and remember me._

_Love,_

_Janine_

_PS. The bees? They’re awesome. You’re going to love them. Really. I promise. Hugs and kisses, J._

_PPS. Did you keep the engagement ring? It really was a beauty. XO, Janey-love._

_PPPS. Good bye, Shay-Shay. Take care. Yours, Jaija._

He folded the papers, one at a time. He put them in the envelope. Then, pensively, he took her handwritten letter back out, and tucked it into his wallet. He went out to the garden.

The hives were rebuilt—the old hives and the char all cleared away.

The sun angled in hard from the east, still low on the horizon, glinting off the waves of the ocean far beyond. The hives were coming awake, the first worker flights taking off, making a halo over the tall wooden boxes tucked into the curve of a stone wall.

“Your mistress is dead,” he said to the bees, awkwardly. “Well. No. She never knew you. Another hive. But she would have loved you. Really. She’d have wanted you to stay. So—it’s apparently a rule. I tell you she died, and I ask you to stay.” He fell silent, then added. “You’d have loved her. She was smart, and funny, and she mattered.”

The bees hummed at him. He sighed, and said, finally, “And… I loved her. I really did love her.”

Then he went back in, and played his violin for hours, until noon had passed, and dinner time came, and the bees all returned to the hive, and night fell, and he slept at last.

 

“When the flower blooms, the bees come, uninvited.” Ramakrishna

*For an example of Sherlock in this mode, check out “Hounds of Baskerville,” the fireside scene. Angry, angry Sherlock. Another instance of his fantasy that he “keeps himself distant from his emotions” coming in conflict with the reality…and pissing him off no end.


End file.
